Maybe I’m just pointing out the obvious, but the way to solve a problem isn’t just brushing it under the rug and making believe it’s not there anymore.  This seems to be what scientists want to do to help mitigate global warming.  Let’s just inject it into rocks and seal it underground!

Uhm.. What nimrod came up with that idea?  There are ways to deal with CO2 that are a helluva lot better!

1. Plant more green plants maybe?  Let them chemically convert the CO2 to uhm.. O2?  Wow.  What a concept.

Just pointing out the obvious.

With Gas Prices Reaching $4.00 per gallon, I’m thinking of switching 2/3 cars to Biodiesel.  I figure I could put a biodiesel processor in my shed and basically save myself a whole bunch of cash.  A 100 Gallon processor would be about $1500.00 (alot less if I build it myself).  Cars, they’re cheap enough.. A Diesel Car (maybe a VW), and replace the Expedition with an F-350 or something completely ridiculous like that.  (I like Big Trucks), but it would be burning B100 (100%), so the cost of the truck would be offset by the cost of fuel pretty quickly.  These days, I drive *maybe* 20 miles a week.

Biodiesel would cost me approx. $1.50 a gallon to process, so fuel prices would be minimal.  It makes sense, but the gelling issue is something I’d have to deal with for 2-3 months out of the year.  (I guess I’d just run 50% petrol mix).

Well, I can say that it’s pretty fucking ugly.  Gas + Electric more than $1000.00 a month.  I wondered if I could do anything about it, so I took a look at a few things and figured, why not give it a shot?  Worse Case, I hate the implementations and I undo my actions.

I went to Costco and bought about 50 Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs and just started swapping them out throughout my whole house.  Figuring 350 Watts was better than 5000 watts.  Well, needless to say, the electric portion of the bill dropped A LOT.  My Electric went from $500.00 per bill to about $235.00.  There’s one thing I don’t like about the new bulbs; the color.  It’s a little too “cold”, but for that kind of savings, I’ll live with it.  I looked into LEDs, but the lumens per watt vs. price just wasn’t there yet.  I figure it took about 2 months to pay off the bulbs in savings alone!  YAY!  New York for the highest energy rates in the country!

Gas.. The other ugly thing.  I’m planning on putting in 2 On-Demand Hot Water Heaters in a parallel circuit to help replace the 75 Gallon Water Heater I currently have.  It seems a little extreme considering there are only 3 people in the house, but I do have 2 guest rooms.  I’d rather be safe than sorry.  They’ll cost about  $2500.00 for the pair + labor and some piping and electrical work.  I own a construction company so it’ll be cheap enough if I let my crews do it or I just might do it myself out of boredom.  That should take another $100 or so off my bill a month.  That’ll pay for itself in about a year or less I figure.

My end goal is to bring down my bill to about $300-400 per month.  I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it, but I figure it’ll be a good start.